


A Day In Someone Else's Shoes

by names_are_a_mystery_to_me



Category: Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)
Genre: Body Swap, F/M, Humor, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:08:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23692891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/names_are_a_mystery_to_me/pseuds/names_are_a_mystery_to_me
Summary: Roy, Jason, and Kori wake up one morning swapped into one of their partners' bodies. Kori keeps forgetting that Roy can't fly, and Jason grapples with being a completely different species. Roy, in Jason's body, is pretty content with the situation, or he would be if he could figure out WHY it happened. Some questions are better left unanswered, though.
Relationships: Roy Harper/Koriand'r/Jason Todd
Kudos: 132





	A Day In Someone Else's Shoes

**Author's Note:**

> This was an extremely specific fanfiction I wanted to read, but it didn't exist yet so I had to write it myself. I don't have the guts to write the sexy parts in as much detail as I want to read, but I'm pretty good at the humour.

Roy was woken up by an alarm clock, somewhere to his right. It was immediately followed by a _smashing_ sound, and Kori cursing loudly, colourfully, and -oddly- in English. He blearily tried to open his eyes, staring up at the ceiling, and was startled into further awakeness by a loud _thump_ to his left.

Kori was sitting on the edge of the bed, swearing up a storm as she plucked smashed bits of the alarm clock out of her hair. Off to his left, there was muffled groaning near the floor. Ha. Jason fell out of bed.

Then Jason sat up, raising his face over the edge of the bed, and Roy’s brain blue-screened, because it _wasn’t Jason_. Red hair, freckles, a fading sunburn, it was _his face_.

He went to rub his eyes, and smacked himself in the nose. When he said “fuck”, it wasn’t his voice that came out of his mouth.

“Aw shit,” Kori said, in an accent that sounded less like hers and more like Jason’s. “Guys, I think we’ve been body-swapped.”

“So it would seem,” said Roy, except it wasn’t Roy, _he_ was Roy. “Jason? Roy?”

“Yeah?” Roy asked, managing to rub his now-watering eyes. “Gimme a minute.”

Roy got up and stumbled to the bathroom, turning on the tap and splashing water on his face. When he squinted into the cracked mirror, _Jason’s_ face stared back at him. “Okay,” he said, and he could have sworn he heard a creak as his brain ground into gear. “Okay, I’m in Jason’s body. That… could be a lot worse, I guess.”

There was another thump in the bedroom, and Roy heard his own voice -but like he sounded on a recording, not in his head- spit out a few of Kori’s favourite Tamaranean curses. He shuffled back out, and whoever was in his body, presumably Kori, picked themselves up off the floor and gave him a regal glare, which was unnerving to see on his own face.

“Roy, your body is incapable of flight and it is most inconvenient.” Yep, definitely Kori. “If this has occurred because of one of your-” Another word he didn’t understand or even recognize, but the tone was clear. “- _contraptions_ , it is not amusing in the slightest.”

He put his hands above his head. “I swear I have no idea how this happened,” he said, actually paying attention when he spoke this time. This wasn’t how Jason’s voice sounded to him, but it was still damn hot. Making a mental note to record himself-as-Jason saying a variety of phrases as soon as the opportunity presented itself, he frowned. “Wait, if I’m Roy, and you’re Kori, then Jason-”

They turned, to where Jason, in Kori’s body, was lying face-down on the bed. There was a muffled scream, then he lifted up his head. “I _hate_ when this happens!” he shouted, to the room at large, then he rolled over onto his back and spat as a strand of hair found its way into his mouth. “Jesus, Kori, how do you stand having this much hair?”

“Jason, this has happened to you before?” Kori asked, drawing herself up to Roy’s full height, nearly half a foot shorter than her own, and placing her hands on her hips.

“Once. I spent the night at the manor and woke up in Dick’s body. He was Damian, Damian was Tim, and Tim was me. It was chaos.” He sighed deeply, sitting up. “Well, it could be worse. At least I don’t mind you guys seeing me naked.”

*****

Jason gave up on cooking breakfast after nearly wrenching their bedroom door off its hinges on his way to the kitchen. Kori’s alien strength was impressive, extremely helpful in a fight, and also hot, but he kept trying to do things like he would in his body, and breaking things. Casualties so far were limited to the alarm clock, and he wanted to keep it that way.

Roy, having the least adjustment to do, took over dishing up cereal. Sure, he was an inch taller and significantly stockier, but compared to Kori adjusting to a body without flight and Jason trying to get a handle on being a different species, that was a breeze.

He stared down at the bowl of cornflakes, unsure if he’d ever seen a less appetizing meal. He dug his spoon in anyway, and nearly spat it out. “Ugh, it’s like eating wet chalk,” he said, pulling a face. “No wonder why you put weird condiments on everything.”

He addressed that last remark to Kori as he went to the fridge for something to make the cereal palatable and came back with a bottle of mustard.

As they all got food into their stomachs, Jason took the chance to observe his own body from the outside. Not like he hadn’t had that chance before, watching Tim struggle, but it was interesting seeing how so much about a person was in their gestures instead of their physical appearance. Roy perched on the edge of his chair, tapping his fingers on the table and staring into space.

Although there was something distinctly _wrong_ with his face. Intellectually, Jason knew that was because he was used to seeing his face reflected in mirrors, and the human face isn’t nearly as symmetrical as you’d think. Less intellectually, his face looked a bit like it was designed by someone who’d heard of humans but had never actually seen one.

He finished his cornflakes and mustard, then startled as he could _feel_ movement in his… stomach? Intestines? “Oh god what the fuck,” he said, bending over and putting his face down on the table. “Kori what are my organs doing, I can feel them doing things.”

“You are digesting, obviously,” Kori responded, and man, was it a trip to hear her clipped Tamaranean accent in Roy’s voice. “Hm. I cannot feel my stomach working. Roy, is your stomach defective? Should I be worried?”

“Nope, humans don’t feel much inside our abdominal cavity,” Roy responded. He paused as Jason sat back up, feeling distinctly ill. “How many stomachs do you have, again?”

“At the moment, one. But my body has nine.”

“Oh jesus fuck,” Jason whispered.

*****

Kori was experiencing difficulties. She knew Roy was strong for a human. He was an archer, and a very good one at that, and it required a fair amount of upper body strength. And yet, she was used to so much more. Using enough force to do anything useful took conscious effort.

Not to mention a veritable buffet table of sensations she had no knowledge of or context for. Roy had been able to identify Jason’s body’s nicotine craving, and he’d promptly disappeared to smoke on the balcony of their current safehouse/apartment, but she had no idea what was going on in Roy’s body.

Wait. There was a feeling she recognized. Itchy. She reached up to scratch her shoulder, and as she did so she realized the source of the itching was old scar tissue. She tugged up the sleeve of Roy’s t-shirt, which had actually been Jason’s at some point, and stared at the jagged scar covering Roy’s entire shoulder.

Tamaraneans did scar, technically, but inflicting an injury serious enough to do so was a feat, and as a result she had very few lasting scars on her own body. Roy and Jason were both heavily scarred, but she’d never understood what that meant beyond the surface discolouration. The deeper scars extended down into the muscle, and there was a slight tightness when she tried to move the scarred muscles. Roy had never mentioned it, likely never even noticed, but it fascinated her.

_How wonderful,_ she thought, _to have one’s body keep a permanent record of every time one survived an injury. Each scar proclaims a victory, a time when one was stronger than what sought to harm them._

Roy stepped back inside, sliding the balcony door shut behind him. “Well, I’m going to go take a shower. Jay, how long does this body-swap thing last?”

Jason shrugged. “Last time it happened, it was about twenty-four hours. We all woke up the next day back in our bodies.”

“Cool. I’m going to go make good use of the time I’ve been given.”

Jason sighed. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” he called after Roy as he disappeared into the bathroom.

*****

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

That ruled out most of the prank calls he was considering, of course, along with shaving Jason’s morning stubble into a hilarious pattern, but it probably didn’t rule out masturbating in the shower.

He turned the shower knob then stepped back to get undressed, giving the water a chance to warm up. Jason slept in boxers and a t-shirt, just like he did, and Roy was pretty sure that t-shirt was originally his. Their shirt collections had merged after a few months of living together, even before they’d started dating, and unless it was form-fitting or unusually obnoxious, they could swap shirts with very little issue.

Even from the inside, Roy couldn’t understand how Jason didn’t believe them when they told him how hot he was. Roy had always been a skinny guy, even when he was taking care of himself, he was just built like that. Jason was his type, on the huskier side with muscle mass that Roy envied.

So Roy spent several minutes flexing in the mirror, just because he could. Then he remembered why he was in there and got into the shower.

He’d jacked off in the shower plenty of times in his own body, but he guessed that everyone’s perception of the world was slightly different, because everything felt… just to the left of what he expected, if that made any sense. He’d noticed it with the cereal too, but while he knew he was experiencing familiar things, it was all being filtered through an unfamiliar sensory system.

He hoped Kori and Jason didn’t want to use the shower, because he was going to be in there for a while.

*****

Jason quit his pacing, sat down on the couch and reached for the remote, trying to ignore how _damn weird_ he felt. It hadn’t been this weird the last time he’d ended up in someone else’s body, but then he’d been the same species, nevermind the same sex.

He put on reruns of a soap opera he’d marathoned once when he’d broken his leg in three places and had to stay home for ages. He just wanted something to take his attention away from how _sensitive_ Kori’s skin was. And also from how he could still feel her stomach working away at the corn flakes.

There was another heavy thump as Kori got up from her seat at the kitchen table without actually putting her legs under her. She sighed, and gave up on walking, instead crawling over to the couch and climbing up onto it next to Jason.

After a moment of inane soap dialogue, Kori spoke up. “Would you like me to teach you to fly?”

“Would you like me to teach you to walk?” Jason responded, and she playfully punched him in the shoulder. The pain was negligible.

“I know how to walk without flying,” she said. Then she frowned, her thinking face just different enough from Roy’s to look odd on his features. “I would like some instruction in something else, though.”

“Yeah?”

“How in the galaxy does Roy get off with these dulled senses?” she exclaimed, pinching one of her thighs. “It feels like I am perceiving everything through a thick blanket. I certainly hope I am returned to my body by tomorrow, because I don’t think I can go on like this.”

Jason laughed. “I bet there’s a really smooth segue into sex, where I promise to _show you_ how he gets off, but I have the opposite problem. You’re so sensitive! I can’t focus on anything because I’m distracted by how much I can feel the couch!”

“Maybe when Roy finishes enjoying himself in the shower, he can help us figure it out,” Kori sighed. “He seems to be relatively comfortable in your body.”

“Yeah, I’m trying not to be worried by that.”

*****

They did end up having sex, but it was awkward and graceless and they had to remind each other of the value of laughing at oneself. Kori wasn’t satisfied, human senses simply not enough for her. Jason spent half the time lying on the floor with a pillow over his head, trying to find some quiet in the overwhelming flood of sensation that Kori lived in twenty-four seven. Roy had fun, but he would have had more fun if Jason and Kori had enjoyed themselves more.

They were all _extremely_ relieved to wake up the next morning in their own bodies, and then they got to have sex that everyone enjoyed.

“Did you ever figure out what caused the body-swapping the last time?” Roy asked Jason sometime the next day.

“Nah. But Damian had this theory. When we were back to normal he blamed it on Tim’s over-caffeinated state of near-collapse, but he asked if we were ‘pawns in some cruel game played by gods’.”

“What, like we’ve been put in an illogical, bizarre situation for the purposes of someone else’s entertainment? But whose?”

“I dunno, he didn’t elaborate. But if any higher powers are listening, I’m telling them to fuck off. Even in the unlikely situation that my entire existence was created solely to entertain, I’d really rather stay in my own body the next time.”

“...You think they’ll listen?”

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone wants to write (or has written) something like this but with all the sexy detail I'm too cowardly to include, please link me to it. Thanks for reading, and have a good one!


End file.
